KINDER'S COMMENTERY: CHARTER SCHOOLS: ACCOUNTABILITY, FREEDOM AND RESULTS

For some years, the vanguard of true educational reform has been something called charter schools, a precise definition of which will follow. It may just be that this promising educational reform, of potentially huge impact for Missouri schools, is about to appear on the horizon right here in the Show Me State. A bipartisan effort is coming together that could bring Missouri to the forefront of a truly exciting reformation in your public schools. Of more importance, though, would be reform in how those schools deliver education, how their results are measured, to whom they are accountable and how they are rewarded.

As is so often the case, necessity is the mother of this particular invention. Missouri is home, in St. Louis and Kansas City, to the two most expensive desegregation cases in America. Indeed, so great is our commitment that, setting aside those cases within the state of California (which Missouri, at less than one-sixth the population, has also outspent), Missouri has spent more on desegregation than every other such case in America combined.

The U.S. Supreme Court has on many occasions made it clear, and one way or another, nearly all factions agree: After 20 years of litigation and all the billions, the curtain is being rung down on the flow of desegregation dollars from the state to the school districts in our two largest urban centers. The problem, then: How do St. Louis and Kansas City pay for their schools once the flow of money on which they have become so dependent shuts off?

The answer provided by former Washington University chancellor William Danforth and other key statewide players is charter schools. Charter schools, that is, plus a sales tax to be voted on by the people of certain cities and counties in the St. Louis and Kansas City metropolitan areas, in exchange for some property tax relief. Charter schools will require new legislation; any such sales tax will require a constitutional amendment to be adopted by a statewide vote of the people.

Danforth is the court-appointed mediator charged with finding a way out of Missouri's desegregation morass. He has spent countless hours over the last year meeting with all parties, with community leaders and with key lawmakers, trying out different ideas.

What are charter schools? The current model is one of parents, teachers, entrepreneurs or community organizers deciding to create a new school or convert an existing school by authority of a charter granted by an authorizing sponsor. As one authority phrases it: "As imagined by these visionaries, charter schools would be accountable for improved student achievement; in exchange for accountability for results, the state would waive most of the rules and regulations that govern traditional public schools." Those with the authority to grant charters would include state and local boards of education or state universities. Schools would have governing boards that would be directly accountable for results. Parents could choose both to enroll their children and to yank them out if they don't like what goes on there.

Voila: Accountability. Freedom. Results. A smidgen of choice.

To have been involved in Missouri's desegregation cases is to know what it is to be locked in an encounter of mutual frustration with, seemingly, no way out. Now, even at this late date, a glimmer of hope appears on the distant horizon. It is a long way from first gauzy discussions, then to proposal and on to concrete reality. It will be fascinating to see whether inspired, bipartisan leadership can fulfill the promise of charter schools and show us the way out of our long and expensive desegregation nightmare.

NEXT: More on charter schools in other states, plus a draft of a proposed bill for Missouri.

~Peter Kinder is assistant to the president of Rust Communications, a state senator from Cape Girardeau and a member of the Senate Education Committee.